Beyond Westeros

An Embassy Ends

IC Date: Day 20 of Month 8, 165 AC
RL Date: April 11, 2014.

In the wake of the mysterious assassination of Tybio Erosenes in the Sealord’s own palace, the Sealord’s justiciars and guards searched high and low for the culprit. Witnesses were questioned, offers of aid were rejected, interviews were arranged, but to no apparent result. The Secret City keeps its secrets even from the Sealord of Braavos, it seems. And from dragon princes from Westeros, too, as it was well-known that Prince Aegon Targaryen has been spurring on the investigation, had even attempted to have certain men questioned until the Sealord’s guard intervened and prevented it. Down at

The great carnival of Braavos, famed throughout the world, drew towards its end with the traditional grand ball in the Sealord’s Palace. A thousand masked men and women entered in, to celebrate the ancient Unmasking of Utheros when the Secret City revealed itself to the world, and it was a grand time. From common merchants to the highest keyholders and lords, the revelers enjoyed the hospitality of the Sealord who was rumored to be among them unheralded and unremarked, perhaps in the plain mask of a commoner, perhaps the more ostentatious mask of a merchant-captain, perhaps even as a servant

The conflict between Pentos and Lys escalates day by day—outright battles at sea, sellsword companies gathering at ports, trade near the Stepstones becoming constricted as both fleets start to demand tolls for safe passage—and yet it is in distant Braavos where the breadth of the conflict hangs in the balance. Two months now since their first meetings with the Sealord himself, and the embassies from King’s Landing and Sunspear dance about one another, attempting to woo Dontario Prestayn and the Iron Bank to their side. The men dispatched by Viserys Targaryen have been dutiful in their

Nearly a moon passed, a moon in which the tidings of troubles between Lys and Pentos grew darker—reports of skirmishes off the Stepstones, of ships seized at harbor and charged onerous duties on vague pretenses, of emissaries departing the respective cities with angry words—and a moon in which two embassies, from Sunspear and King’s Landing, found themselves waiting the Sealord’s pleasure. They did not do so idly, by all accounts: Ser Perrin Blackmont was seen each and every day trying to work his way through layers of minor officials, on the behalf of the prince from Dorne, while it’s said

The winds blow, and ships from all corners of the world sail from port to port, bringing trade, bringing travelers, bringing news. From the Summer Isles, where the rarest of woods grow, the tidings are of the Stepstones being of late swept almost clean of corsairs and pirates and reavers; their swan ships are rarely disturbed, and they speak of great war galleys flying the Velaryon seahorse beneath the Targaryen three-headed dragon as an explanation for it all. From Qarth, where silks and jewels and rare antiquities can be found, the pale sailors tell of a war between the men of Yi Ti and

In King’s Landing, the news of the king’s victory after the Dornishmen attempted their night raid against his siege was well-received. It has become a ritual at the court, to gather in the Great Keep through much of the day, waiting for news to arrive drip by drip, carried on ravens’ wings. And yet, though the news was happy for most—a few knights of note were killed on the king’s side, it’s true, including Ser Yonel Storm of the City Watch—it was not for those Dornish present. The news of Prince Rhodry’s probable death, and the fall of Ser Elric, the Shade of Ghost Hill, troubled them.

Lord Stark has returned now to his seat in the North, after his visit with the king. In Braavos, the Sealord deals with the preparations for his wedding in the coming year to Princess Rhaena, while the Archon of Tyrosh and the Prince of Pentos threaten war against him. It’s said that reavers from the Iron Isles have skirted Fair Isle and the shore of the westerlands, to the concern of Lord Loren. And in King’s Landing, matters great and small are carried out. Black-winged ravens carried missives to Dorne, orders and commands, while a Dornish hostage—soon to be an heiress, if the Dornish do